


A Blessing and a Curse

by redketchup



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, I shall wear my plot holes as fishnet stockings, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Is Kevin Day Moana?, Is Neil the little mermaid?, M/M, Mermaids, POV Andrew Minyard, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Physical Abuse, Pirates, Slow Burn, Who is to know, will add tags as needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-11 10:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28469592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redketchup/pseuds/redketchup
Summary: Andrew waits, the mermaid stares up with his blue eyes, and then, finally—“Neil,” the mermaid admits in a low tone, his words almost swallowed by the noise of the waves, but Andrew hears him still. “You can call me Neil.”It’s a shit truth, but it’s more than Andrew expected, so he gives his name in return.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 24
Kudos: 93





	1. Cursing like a Sailor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crazy_like_a](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazy_like_a/gifts).



> This fic happened because of two things:
> 
> 1) I was living abroad, working on an island, stopped and thought, "Whoa, I should base a setting off this island, but what story could possibly use it?" My unoriginal brain could only supply, "Mermaids."  
> 2) crazy_like_a produces works that must take so much hard effort and time and energy and then somehow, on their tumblr (hopingforcoordinates), they also find the time to answer about fifty million asks. I didn't know how to thank them for producing some of the only works that can keep bringing me back into the aftg fandom. so, if they ever find the time and don't mind fantasy with blatant inconsistencies, this is for them.

“You’re cursed,” a voice says, the sound of it surfacing from below.

Andrew lets the words lay thinly in the air while he exhales a cloud of smoke. His legs are dangling over the edge of a dock, the drop to the water below an open invitation that makes his stomach clench.

There’s an impatient splash, small but distinct, and then Andrew sees a ripple, a flash of scales, and an auburn head of hair.

Blue eyes, so clear that they could be cracked glass on a face, glare up from below. Get past the face, get past the scars on the bare chest, and you get scales of red beneath the dark water. A deep hue that matches the rest of the mermaid. All bright colors, all warnings and danger signs.

All stupid, stupid, stupid.

The moment of silence swells too long, purposefully on Andrew’s end, and the mermaid’s mouth pulls, eyes narrowing. Andrew lets him work himself into whatever twisting thoughts he may have, being sure not to react beyond bringing his cigarette back to his lips.

The mermaid opens his mouth once, eyebrows furrowing, but then seems to abandon whatever he wanted to say with a shake of his head. He dips below the surface, going far enough down that all his bright, stupid colors disappear from sight, and Andrew exhales abruptly despite himself.

He stands up, the night dark enough to swallow the dying ember at the end of his cigarette, and heads back to land.

* * *

Cursed is a brick of a word. A brick to the head. Something to leave you bleeding out in the street. 

Yes. _Yes_. It’s a heavy thing. Nicky’s mouth can’t even form the sounds without his eyes going glassy, like the weight of it is pressing him down to nothing. So silly, so emotional. 

Not emotional like Kevin Day, though. Oh no, definitely not. Kevin’s fun. A broken hand, a broken legacy, and you get a broken boy. He misses the sea so much he tries finding it at the bottom of liquor bottles. You can’t drink the sea, Kevin, it’ll kill you. Tsk, tsk.

But then again, it seems Kevin hasn’t learned many life lessons. After all, he takes Andrew and tells him he believes in Andrew’s potential, in his life. Ha, so stupid. 

But look, look, look; what’s Andrew doing, holding onto something so stupid?

“Quit laughing,” Aaron snaps, and oh, is he laughing? Yes, yes, he’s laughing.

Andrew swallows his tittering, but can’t fight the grin, knows he can’t, so he doesn’t even try. Instead he seeks out Kevin’s frown from across the shipyard. Kevin, Kevin, Kevin and the sack of grains he’s loading onto a pallet. Andrew meets his gaze and pointedly thumps his feet against the barrel of freshwater he’s sitting on. Kevin’s face darkens, mouth opening to shout something, but he swallows the lecture and turns away. 

The laughter spills out of Andrew’s mouth again, bright and loud, and Aaron scowls. Scowls his way down the dock. Off his mirror-image goes, walking away to help load the supplies for the small caravel that’s saddled along the dock.

“You’re not going to help?”

Andrew licks his lips, wipes his eyes, and turns towards Renee. She’s bundled in her coat, walking towards him. She offers him a smile, hefting up the Crate of Something in her arms for show.

“Oh, no,” Andrew says, feigning shock. “Why, I couldn’t. It would displease the captain dearly.”

“Wymack?” Renee asks, stepping beside his water barrel and looking out at the rest of the crew, helping load another’s ship.

“Don’t be obtuse,” Andrew says.

No, of course Wymack wouldn’t be displeased, with his permanent frown and his crossed arms. No. _The Fox’s_ captain doesn’t shy from curses, no matter how heavy they are.

No, it was the caravel’s captain, snarling with Wymack and Kevin late last night, showing teeth and barking. 

“I won’t have any cursed men touching my ship’s supply,” he raved, all but foaming at the mouth, and Kevin wouldn’t meet the man’s eyes — a secret locked behind his guilty gaze. “You’d be doing yourself better, David, to get rid of your madman.”  
  
Wymack didn’t like that. Oh no. Wymack's eyes flashed and he swelled big, but Andrew just walked out the door, uninterested in whatever defense Wymack felt Andrew deserved. 

Renee hums, unhappy, and shifts the weight of the crate in her arms. “They aren’t always sympathetic to people like us.”

Andrew rocks on the barrel, head thrown back, and cackles. “Oh, Renee. Just say it as it is. Is it that hard of a word to say?”

She frowns, pitying and scolding all in one, and for a brief moment, Andrew can grasp the stillness within himself that is so often hard to find these days. 

Cursed, it’s a heavy word. He knows.

And yet he thinks of a face peering out from the tide, blue eyes unabashedly staring up, the word a simple truth on a mermaid’s mouth.

The stillness inside him wobbles, strains, and breaks.

Andrew grins in Renee’s face, feeling smothered under waves and buzzing and loudness. “Go on, Walker. You have a job to do.”

Renee sighs, but she doesn’t argue. She goes, her coattails fluttering behind her.

* * *

Palmetto is small. Far smaller than Columbia. Less travelled to, too.

Despite this, the island’s reputation — for it does have one — belongs to the Foxes. 

Palmetto is an island that houses a land-bound crew. An island with Kevin Day on it. An island that draws magic and curses. 

Palmetto is small, with a dangerous reef on the southwestern coast, and it has attracted a mermaid.

Most of the island’s residents live towards the northeast, where the shipyard welcomes the occasional trader, the seasonal fishing ships, and (even rarer) folk in search of Betsy Dobson’s counsel. 

There’s a curving, washed-away road leading southbound, towards the opposite side of the island. However, it takes a handful of hours to travel one way. 

Andrew doesn’t take the road.

He comes to a rickety, collapsing dock late at night, when the madness has washed him thin and leaves him feeling ten different types of exhaustion. Waves crash against the rocks in a dizzying way, loud and roaring to remind people of what the sea will do to a warm body if given one. 

Andrew wraps himself in the noise and sits at the end of the abandoned dock. He dangles his legs over the edge, pulls out some tobacco and paper to roll a cigarette.

Several minutes later, once his cigarette is lit, he hears something move in the water beneath the dock.

“Predictable,” he says.

There’s a moment, where nothing more happens, but then the water sloshes against the dock’s wood, and a familiar face appears below his feet. 

Blue eyes blink up at him. “I like the smell.”

Andrew doesn’t provide a response besides exhaling smoke and blowing it downwards, and he watches the mermaid’s eyes dilate, how the mermaid breathes deep.

Something twinges in Andrew’s chest. He refuses to give it any thought.

The mermaid exhales, eyes lidding like he’s ready to fall asleep, and says, “Another ship sailed away today.”

“That’s what ships do.”

An eye-roll. It's a human behavior that makes Andrew wonder how he learned it, whether he watched people long enough to understand it, if eye-rolls are just universal. 

“You know what I mean,” the mermaid presses, shifting restlessly below, with the colors of his tail making a brief appearance near the surface before disappearing in the deep again. 

Andrew looks at the sky. “Do I?”

“The ships never dock long. They cross the waters within a moon’s cycle.”

“Is that why you’re here? Less people to hook your pretty tail?”

Andrew knows without looking that the mermaid is scowling. At what part, who knows. It could be Andrew’s evasion of his question, it could be the mentioning of the obvious. Mermaids are nothing more than stories for a reason. 

_Rare creatures_ , Cass used to say, with a smile that’d make the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes crinkle. _Hiding away from the world._

Cass never could see the truth, even when it was far more obvious than whispers of mermaids.

There’s a splash, and water droplets flick upwards at Andrew’s boots. “Why do they leave so quickly?”

Andrew glances down with a cool expression. “Why do you stay close to an island with so many people?”

The mermaid ducks underwater, giving Andrew a distorted glare from beneath the surface before pulling back up into the air, his hair dripping. “You do not need to know.”

“Oh?” Interesting. “You’re rather determined to not answer my questions, but you pout when I don’t answer yours. Are you a child?”

Here the mermaid bares his teeth, and it shows his edges in a way that’d unnerve any lesser man. His gaze darkens, face hardens, and it’s hard to ignore the way his teeth appear a little too sharp for a normal human’s. Eyes more beady than before. 

Shark-like.

Andrew isn’t a lesser man, with his feet dangling above such a creature, and stares back, unimpressed.

The mermaid breaks the stare first, when Andrew once again sucks on his cigarette and blows smoke downwards. The red tail moves beneath the murk, a shock of color. The distance the mermaid puts between himself and the space below Andrew is obvious. 

Andrew says, “I’m willing to do an even exchange, nothing more. If you can’t agree to that, then get lost and leave me in peace.”

Something passes across the mermaid’s face, too quick for Andrew to determine, but then he gives a cursory, “Fine. What do you want to know?”

“What are you doing near Palmetto?”

The tail reappears, the end flicking up and splashing water before disappearing again. A sign of agitation if Andrew’s ever seen one.

“Palmetto is this island?”

Andrew gives a short nod.

The mermaid shakes his head. “Not that question.”

Andrew stands up, drops his cigarette stub so that it falls into the water beside the mermaid’s side, and walks down the dock. 

A cacophony of splashing, and then, “Wait!”

Andrew stops, not entirely sure why he does, and peers over the side of the dock. 

The mermaid looks up, agitation like the water on his face, and he runs long, dark fingernails through his hair. “Not that, but I can tell you something else.”

Andrew waits, the mermaid stares up with his blue eyes, and then, finally—

“Neil,” the mermaid admits in a low tone, his words almost swallowed by the noise of the waves, but Andrew hears him still. “You can call me Neil.”

It’s a shit truth, but it’s more than Andrew expected, so he gives his name in return.

* * *

“There’s been word,” Kevin says, and then he makes a face like he’ll either throw up or cry.

Andrew grins and waggles his eyebrows in the direction of the bottle of rum on Wymack’s desk. Kevin only hesitates for a second, something hot flashing in his eyes, before he practically jumps up to grab it. 

Ha, ha. Watery boy, looking for his open seas in stinging, brown liquids. 

“You mean rumors,” Nicky presses, half in exasperation, half in sympathy. He gives Andrew a look like he expects Andrew to back him. “Just because some fishermen gossip at the docks doesn’t mean anything.”

The sunlight that seeps through Wymack’s windows creates twisting shadows. Little dark shapes that seep under the floor and give distorted lengths to the furniture. Andrew wants to dip his hands into the black, see if they come back stained.

There’s movement in the doorway, pulling Andrew’s gaze from shifting shadows to shifting girls. Dan Wilds and the blonde terror Reynolds. Identical frowns pull on their mouths. But no, not identical like Andrew and Aaron. No, no. Not identical like that. Dan Wilds is thoughtful and sympathetic like a miniature Wymack. Oh, dear. Allison Reynolds is exasperated and uninterested. Tsk, tsk. Why are they here again? 

“We’re here because we have a right, crazy,” Allison sniffs, and uh-oh, was he speaking aloud again? Oh, well. Might as well take the plunge while he’s already under the water.

“A right, you say?” Andrew asks, voice swelled with giddiness and laughter. Strange in his ears. Buzzing, twisted noise. “What is it you provide again? Besides a mouth full of shit, that is.”

Aaron scowls from the opposite side of the room, where he looks like he’s trying to press himself through the wall and disappear. Nicky grimaces. Kevin drinks. Wymack drags a hand over his face and looks ready to drop his entire head to his desk. What a noise that’d make. Thunk — not unlike the sound of a body dropping into its wooden coffin. 

“Fuck you,” Allison spits, drawing her height up and flicking a strand of hair over her shoulder. “You’re more of a deadweight than any of us. Scratch that, you’re a goddamn albatross. We should get rid of you while we can.”

Oh, oh, there’s a flare in Nicky’s eyes, ever the loyal creature.

“Then we’d have to be rid of your asshole lover.” Nicky shrugs. “Y’know, the drunkard who’d sell us out for a bottle of rum.”

Aaron snorts. “More like a half bottle at that.”

Dan Wilds drapes a hand over Reynolds’ shoulder. Peacekeeper, that one, but whatever lecture she’s got is swallowed by Wymack’s curt, “Enough. All of you.”

Kevin lurches to the corner, collapsing into a chair by the bookshelf to nurse his bottle. Andrew feels a shift in his focus, a tug towards coherence that has him noting the circles under Kevin’s eyes, the shake in his hands. For a second, he can determine exactly when Kevin will be hungover in a few hours, can figure the steps to take to keep Kevin from vomiting all over himself when that time comes. He starts to put together a meal they can scrounge from Abby, how long Kevin can rest before he tries to return to the beach tonight.

And then it slips away; the madness determined to pull Andrew back under like a lone needle sinking into a haystack.

Something hysteric shifts around in his chest. He might laugh it out. Just a little. 

Oh, oh, he’s missing something. Fish. They’re talking about fish.

“—with seasons changing as they are, it’s certain to put some ships in our area.”

Kevin shakes his head, voice cracking when he says, “Riko wouldn’t come so far south without a reason. _The Raven_ isn’t a fishing ship. Its captain doesn’t follow migration patterns.”

Wymack’s face pinches, an echo of Kevin’s own. “There is no guarantee that it was _The Raven_.”

“Exactly,” Dan pitches in, playing her role as the supportive first mate. Well done, Wilds. “These are all rumors.”

“We ignore it, then?” Aaron asks, and Andrew doesn’t miss how he looks at everyone but Andrew. “Ignore a rumor until it catches us blind? Sure, sounds smart. Number Two over there isn’t exactly someone we can move last minute, is he? His curse doesn’t work like that, or have you forgotten what happened last spring?”

“Aaron,” Nicky chides, but Kevin ducks his head, scarred left hand brushing the ink etched into his cheek.

“We’ll look into it,” Wymack promises, firm and giving each of them an even look. “Don’t overreact, but don’t underestimate the possibility. Allison, has Renee spoken to Betsy recently?”

Wymack doesn’t ask Andrew, as he is right not to. Bee and Andrew’s days are for Bee and Andrew. 

Allison scowls, and then there are walls, building up around a pretty face. Not pretty to Andrew. No, not pretty to him. Not like wet eyelashes, a downturned mouth, auburn hair. 

Not that Neil is anything past pretty. He is skittish, stubborn, and strange. A mermaid drawn to land. Ha, perhaps he has a curse of his own.

Ah, ah. Reynolds. Betsy. Renee.

“She is meeting with her today,” Allison gives, grudgingly. “But you know the island hasn’t had travellers.”

Andrew thinks blue eyes, puckered scars noticeable even from beneath the water, and—

“The ships never dock long,” Andrew’s repeats, and it’s odd, listening to his voice when he isn’t trying to make the words. “They cross the waters within a moon’s cycle.”

He gets a number of stares. A few dismissive. A few uneasy. Nicky’s face is crumpled and sad, because yes, yes. Cursed is such a heavy word. Kevin’s is full of dislike, and it’d be so easy if it was dislike for Andrew, but no, Kevin Day doesn’t work like that. He _believes_ in Andrew after all. His dislike is a more complicated thing, a creature hateful of curses and madness.

Aaron’s dislike is easier to swallow. A taste of nothing slipping past Andrew’s tongue.

“Right,” Wymack supplies, eyeing Andrew in thought, whatever thought that may be. “Well, tell Renee to come talk to me when you see her, will you?”

“Of course,” Dan says, pulling on Reynolds’ elbow, like Andrew has scared her away. “We know where to find you.”

“Likewise.”

The two go, and Nicky shifts, head swiveling between them all before Aaron rolls his eyes and huffs out into the hall. 

“Uh, right.” Nicky looks at Aaron’s retreating back, then sighs. “Talk to you later, Cap’n.”

He shuts the door behind himself. 

And it goes quiet.

Kevin drapes a trembling hand over his face, the one not gripping the bottle of rum, and heaves a shaky sigh. Tonight Kevin will half-drown himself, practicing his usual attempts to work past his curse, and Andrew expects it will require his full attention when that happens. No time for a walk to the island’s southwestern coast.

“Kevin,” Wymack says, rising from his desk to place a calloused hand on Kevin’s shoulder. “Nothing is going to happen to you, you hear?”

Kevin drops his hand, cracks in his expression, cracks in his voice. “I should just go back. Go back before he comes for me here.”

Something cold burns in Andrew’s belly, or maybe that’s not quite right. Maybe it’s hot because hot things burn, don’t they? But the cold can burn, too. Maybe it’s hot and it’s cold. Oh, so many blurred thoughts, so many things that aren’t Andrew. 

“You’re not going anywhere,” Wymack tells Kevin, his voice rumbling across the room, but Andrew can tell Kevin’s not convinced.

Kevin is too deep in the water, the pressure too much. He won’t be convinced until he’s sober, but even then, his panic will try to nudge him towards Riko. Andrew knows.

“Kevin, Kevin,” Andrew says, waggling his fingers at Kevin’s bloodshot gaze. “I don’t make empty promises. Let me stand between you and Riko, you hear? You’re not leaving.”

Not that Kevin could anyway, not with his curse.

Kevin swallows, mouth curled into something hurt and defiant and contrary, and Andrew can’t have that. 

He startles both Wymack and Kevin when he jumps away from the wall, grabbing the doorknob and swinging the door open. Andrew swings it back and forth a few times, making it _creakcreakcreak_ until irritation worms into Kevin’s expression.

Ah, much better. No more wet boy.

“Quit it,” Kevin snaps, standing up and moving out from Wymack’s hand, a strangled look on his face. “God, you can never stop, can you?”

Andrew had a plan. He had a plan. What was it again? Oh, yes—

“Come, come,” Andrew sing-songs. “Abby is going to fix and feed you. Or perhaps just feed. Either way, food and then you can bitch and moan all you like when you’re no longer sodden and boozy. Goodbye, Captain."

Wymack frowns. “Don’t eat all of Abby’s food, you hear?”

Andrew waves in a noncommittal manner. Kevin grumbles something, but he follows Andrew out the door, or perhaps it’s the other way around. Andrew can never tell these days.

* * *

Kevin and Andrew have a promise, born out of desperation months ago.

But Kevin has doubts shaped like Riko Moriyama.

Andrew hasn’t figured out how to keep Kevin from drowning in those doubts yet. 

If there truly are sightings of _The Raven_ in southern waters, then Andrew better think of a solution fast.


	2. Between the Devil and the Deep, Blue Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the more I write this the more I remember I haven't actually read the books in years. is there such a thing as a fast, slow burn? Oh well, I'm a writer being as vague as humanly possible until it's appropriate enough to have them kiss. as the tags say, I'll wear my plot holes as fishnet stockings.
> 
> again, I pen this chapter as a letter of admiration to crazy_like_a 
> 
> god. she's so cool.

Once upon a time, Cass pointed outside her kitchen window. A thin finger, outstretched towards a shed perched on the edge of a small property. She told him _, That’s where Richard keeps all his tools; his nets, his fishing hooks, his fillet knives, you name it._

She smiled at him, her crow’s feet always crinkling. _Since Richard is away tonight, I’ll have Drake take you out there and show you how to use the knives. Then you can be ready to help anytime the boys bring a catch in, how’s that sound?_

Andrew had lived with bakers, masons, families surviving on begging in the streets, fishermen, and a number of orphanages funded by the churches. If there was anything he learned after years of being forced to cook his own meals, or preparing meals for his _gracious_ keepers, it’s how to fillet a fish.

Besides, Richard didn’t keep his shed locked. Andrew checked it already. He could practice with those knives any time.

But Cass was smiling at him, Cass was the one who said, _You poor, blessed thing, come home with us_ , and he was— 

No matter. Instead, he said nothing, tried to remember how to breathe, and stirred the pot over the fire.

* * *

On a night so clear someone could spend most of it counting the stars without end, Andrew sits in a sailboat, oars in, and watches Kevin Day fight against the universe.

Kevin is in a sailboat of his own, only a few spaces away from Andrew’s, and his face is made of edges far sharper than Andrew’s knives. This Kevin is sober, this Kevin is the one who looks Andrew in the face and tells him he’s worth something, this Kevin tries to fight against his curse.

Tonight, Kevin’s trying the knot method again. Something about the power of knots, scrounged up from legends like the Gordian Knot to what sounds like any witch’s home remedy. All Andrew thinks about are nooses.

Their boats are bobbing on water, but only barely. They’re close enough to land that it’d be a fifteen second swim before they could stand on the seabed and walk the rest of the way out of the ocean. Kevin’s boat has a thick, long rope dropped into the water. So long that the other end is fastened to an anchor placed in the sand on the beach. 

Kevin uses steady hands to slowly feed the rope into the water, and then pauses and places the bag of sand from under his bench onto the top of his end of the rope, keeping it from unravelling into the water as he picks up his oars. He rows once, twice, to coax his sailboat further away from the shore, and then pulls them back in. He moves the bag of sand, picks up the rope, and repeats the process. The water laps at his boat.

Andrew sits, smokes a cigarette, and watches Kevin’s plan slowly fall apart.

Kevin’s boat makes it only fifteen feet further from Andrew’s when the water, seemingly for no reason, becomes choppy. The small waves pushing towards the beach suddenly grow, swelling, little by little. The noise they make against Kevin’s boat fattens from a consistent lapping into an aggressive battering. 

Andrew, seeing Kevin’s face pale and tighten when a particular wave shakes his boat enough to send him stumbling to the floor of his boat, snubs out his cigarette and drops his oars into the water. Their splash is a loud and unmistakable warning. 

“No, not yet,” Kevin snaps at him over the waves, righting himself and regripping his own oars. “It’s not as bad as usual, I think it’s working.”

Andrew ignores him, uninterested in desperate denial, and rows over to his boat. “Grab onto the rope, I’m pulling you in.”

“Andrew—” 

“No.” 

Kevin looks like he might argue, but then the waves rock his boat hard enough that an oar falls out of his grip and into the water. He goes to grab it, but the bag of sand that sits atop of the rope is displaced, and the rope starts to unravel into the water. Kevin’s hand freezes, for a moment, as he has to make a choice between the rope and the oar

Kevin abandons the oar, and grabs onto the rope, looking bitter and grudging and hateful as he does. He meets Andrew’s eyes, makes a face like he’s going to give a scathing comment or a scream, but swallows his frustration and begins fastening the rope.

Andrew rows close enough that Kevin can toss over the rope, after tying part of it to his boat, and Andrew makes quick work of fastening to his own before sitting back down and rowing to shore. It’s difficult, with the sea trying to toss and turn their boats with increasing violence. The water sprays into the hull, soaking them, getting into their eyes. The noise becomes deafening. Andrew’s arms burn with each push and pull.

Right as they make it into shallow water, Kevin jumps into the water, soaking his clothes up to his hips. Andrew unties the rope from his boat and jumps out.

They make quick work of securing their boats, pushing them onto sand and placing weights to keep them in place for the change of tides later. 

Kevin doesn’t speak to him, but Andrew doesn’t have any pity to spare. Kevin’s misplaced anger will sort itself by morning, for a while, until Kevin finds another bottle and drinks himself into oblivion. And then they’ll repeat the process again tomorrow night, with Andrew playing watchman as Kevin Day tries to work around powers beyond his control.

Land-bound. That’s Kevin Day’s curse. It’s a dream for anyone else, but a nightmare for him. Kevin Day is made of the sea, has been living with the ocean since a child, but now if he so much as makes it twenty feet into the nearshore then the sea will do what it can to drag him into its embrace. The further from land he gets, the more violent the call becomes, until Kevin will be nothing more than a body dragged under the depths.

Last spring was a testimony to the severity of his curse — a shipwreck off the coast of Palmetto, one that wrecked more lives than the ship Kevin had sailed in on. Kevin hasn’t been able to keep sober since then, but Andrew doubts his frequent intoxication stems from the event. His inebriation has always been tinted black like raven wings.

Cursed is a brick of a word, strapped to Kevin Day’s chest and dragging him further and further down until he’ll be nothing more than shards of a name. Every night he tries to find a loophole, tries to push the bindings of magic on him like he’ll discover a chink in the curse’s armor. The knot method — keeping a knot on land, one in the boat — is one of his many fruitless attempts. 

One day, if Kevin’s not careful, all this pushing will get him killed.

Andrew’s here to prevent that from happening.

* * *

“What do you know of curses?”

“What?”

Andrew doesn’t like repeating himself, especially when he’s been heard, but Neil seems to have genuinely missed the words.

Today the waters are calm, with the only waves being further out where the reef sticks its razor-sharp edges above the water’s surface. Still water is often a lie, and sure enough, if Andrew looks, he can spot the signs of a large rip current off to his left.

Either way, rip currents or not, it’s a quieter backdrop than most of their nightly conversations. Yet Neil is distracted, consistently wading off towards the right side of the dock.

His long tail twists him right before he stops himself, steers himself back towards the dock. He’s gone round several times now, almost like he doesn’t notice himself doing it; too intent with eyeing something on land. Andrew has looked, out of curiosity, but it’s only the beach and the treeline.

Andrew picks vehemently at a splinter under his thumb. “Curses. What does a mermaid know about them?”

Neil blinks at him, his tail a blur that guides him back to the dock. When he looks at Andrew above him, he tilts his head and exposes his neck. Andrew watches water run rivets down Neil’s exposed skin.

Neil shakes his head. “If you are asking if I know how to break yours, then—”

“I’m not, but that’s an interesting implication. The possibility of breaking curses.” 

Neil scowls, irritated at the truth he practically handed over, and dives below the water — red tail spraying water before disappearing from sight. 

Andrew waits, leaning back on his hands to look at the constellations above. He doesn’t actually know if Neil will reappear. After all, Neil so easily swims away the second he dislikes a topic. Retreating to the depths of an angry tide with nothing more than a flick of his tail. 

Even so, Neil is stubborn. Stubborn and curious.

Tonight must be a night for curiosities, as only a few minutes later the sound of Neil rising to the surface reaches Andrew’s ears.

“If you are not asking about breaking your curse, then what?” There’s a pause, some silent correction. “Oh, not what. Who. You are not asking about yourself, are you?”

Something tightens, somewhere, in Andrew’s chest, until he is overly aware of the lack of footing under his dangling legs. It makes his stomach swoop, how easily Neil pieces Andrew’s intentions together, and he wants to break something at the thought.

Breath too even to be anything but forced, like he can contain the rage and irritation through the power of his lungs alone, Andrew looks down to seek out blue eyes.

Neil doesn’t flinch away from Andrew’s intense gaze. Andrew can’t stand him.

“What do you know about curses?” Andrew asks, only once more, and it’s a reminder of their game of truths as much as it is a warning that he won’t ask again.

Neil brings a hand out of the water to spread his fingers against a rotting dock pillar. He scratches at a groove as he gathers and chooses his words. Andrew waits. 

It’s a half minute later when Neil drops his hand and shrugs. “A little. Some can be fixed with far easier methods than whatever solutions you humans make up. Some can be countered with another curse. Some can never be fixed.”

Interesting.

Neil uses his arms to push himself away from the dock. “How long have you been cursed?”

“Two years. Are you cursed?”

“No. How were you cursed?”

“From a witch.” 

Andrew should have just killed the men who cornered Nicky, two years ago, but he couldn’t guarantee that Nicky and Aaron wouldn’t meet punishment alongside him. After all, no crew had brought them aboard yet, and they were working at a tavern on Columbia’s shoreside. 

They were too known. Without exit.

So Andrew broke the men, and when he was tried in court, no one told him Columbia had their own half-baked witch inducted into the judicial system. Be thou for the people, serve the crown, and give curses over a cell. How efficiently crime drops with such change.

 _You’re lucky they didn’t hang you_ , Aaron snarled, and Andrew told him, _We weren’t born with luck, brother_.

Andrew has no need for luck, no need for magic, and so his curse is nothing to him. The things that should matter always are.

Neil takes his answer with a sour look, mouth drawn and eyes narrowed. He dips underwater, disappearing from sight for several seconds.

When he returns, hair dripping in front of his eyes, all he says is, “Witches are fools.”

Andrew snorts, thinking of Betsy’s little cottage on Palmetto’s highest hill, surrounded by cliff sides and gardens. She is probably pouring herself a cup of tea at this moment, drizzling enough honey into her mug to rot all of her teeth. Renee might have just visited, her own cup empty and sitting on the table waiting to be washed. Betsy won’t wash it until morning. She never does.

Witches are foolish, definitely, but not useless. 

He returns Neil’s response with, “How long have you been around Palmetto?”

“Since the men drowned with their ship.”

That was Kevin’s shipwreck, last spring. It is nearing midsummer now. Andrew stows four months away, tucked neatly into his memory, for later.

“Are the curses why the ships leave Palmetto so quickly?”

Neil says Palmetto with a clumsy tongue, pausing deliberately over the syllables like he’s afraid to say it wrong. 

Andrew spends too much time noticing details like that. He notices the slashes decorating Neil’s chest and stomach, the circular shaped scar that could be from a pistol bullet, an unusual bite mark on his shoulder. Neil talks with stunted sentences, like speaking was a practice he heard about but never tried for himself until recently. All these pieces should fall together, clear parts of the picture left unseen. They don’t.

Andrew brings a knee to his chest, inching back on the dock so that Neil has to swim to the side to see him properly. “Who knows.”

It’s the truth. Andrew can’t know why the ships are leaving so quickly, can’t know if the rumors of curses are able to deter even the most experienced sailors. 

Neil accepts Andrew’s answer with a solemn nod, then goes back to spying the treeline.

Andrew gets up to start the trek back to the north side of the island, and Neil provides no goodbye. As it should be.

He leaves, and he doesn’t take the road.

* * *

“Blood magic,” Wymack practically snarls, teeth and all, “is what got you into this mess in the first place. Don’t believe it’ll get you back out.”

Kevin is wearing a mirrored expression on his face, albeit queasier. He sits in his chair with arms crossed so tight it’s like he’s afraid he’ll fall to pieces if he doesn’t keep himself held.

Andrew nudges him, just to see if Kevin will shatter. But no, all Kevin does is shoot a withering glare his way. Boring.

“I don’t believe Betsy would agree to this, anyway,” Abby adds, eyes darting between Wymack and Kevin like a fish trapped in a bowl. “So let’s step back, yeah?”

Wilds and Boyd poke their heads into the doorway from the kitchen. Popping in. Nosy little daisies. Andrew bares his teeth at them to see if they’ll jump back underground like flowers tucked into a coffin. Hopefully they’ll remember dinner-and-a-show needs _dinner_ first, which they’re meant to be preparing. God forbid Gordon’s food isn’t on the table by the time he arrives.

Kevin grits his teeth. “We are running out of time. If _The Raven_ is moving south, what other options do we have?”

Everyone in the room knows there are options before a decision as desperate as blood magic is considered. Shutting up, for one, is a good start. 

“Kevin,” Andrew sing-songs, just to watch Kevin’s face sour even further. “If you’re looking for someone to agree, go find a mirror, there’ll be a guy. Tell him I sent you.”

“We can be patient, not jump to conclusions,” Wymack answers, ignoring Andrew entirely, and isn’t that just rude? Or maybe Andrew didn’t speak aloud at all. He never knows what does or does not come out of his mouth these days.

Abby steps across the room to Kevin’s chair, draping a hand on his shoulder. “We need to be cautious, Kevin. You wouldn’t push an injury, this is the same.”

Scowl softens, edges evaporate. Storm cloud Kevin loses his dark weight. 

Two light knocks come from across the room, and lo and behold is Renee, knuckle poised against the door frame leading into the hall. Andrew can see the front window in the hall behind her. It overlooks a cobblestone road leading towards the market. There was a large mackerel haul this morning. Aaron won’t touch mackerel. Too oily. Nicky told a little lie to a little doe-eyed girl — _I’m telling you, Katelyn, Aaron loves a good, roasted mackerel_ — and now Aaron eats a mackerel dish every week. Andrew didn’t react to Nicky’s tittering confession about the lie, a few weeks ago, Kevin couldn’t have cared less, and Nicky left the room a sorry mix of crestfallen and irritated.

“Andrew,” Renee says, and he blinks, blinks, blinks.

Ah, there are several eyes on him. The nosy duo are in the room now, and Abby’s arm has made its way across Kevin’s shoulders. Wymack’s got his eyebrows raised, a gruff patience — walking contradiction, their captain is — on his face. Renee smiles.

She knew Andrew wasn’t listening. How kind, dragging him back into this awful conversation.

Oh, wait. Wait. Renee has a jar of something. It looks like powder, or dirt. It might be dirt. That’s interesting. Renee and her jar.

“I was saying that I heard a little of Kevin and Captain’s argument, and I side with Captain.” Renee jiggles the jar a little. “I did a little research.”

Which means she had a visit to the curse nurse. Busy, buzzing Betsy-Bee. 

“Exciting. Do you hear, Kevin? We’re turning to books now. Ever read one of those?” Andrew claps his hands together. “Tell me, do royal ships have libraries on them?”

Kevin looks half-tempted to actually answer, mouth falling open on automatic, but his eyes dart away from Andrew with a hard blink, turning onto Renee. 

“You’re talking about spells,” he accuses, eyes narrowed like Natalie Renee Walker cursed his own mother.

“I’m not suggesting blood magic,” Renee placates, rubbing a hand over her jar. “Betsy and I have discussed some options, and we feel this may be the best direction to go. After all, I don’t believe your attempts to find a literal loophole in the curse will work either.”

There’s a pregnant pause, and Andrew can see every one of them remembering last spring’s shipwreck — splintering wood, men screaming in the water, _The Fox_ barely escaping the wreckage.

The very day Kevin’s curse was placed, he had escaped Riko by paying his way as a passenger on a small transport ship. The ship made it three days before Kevin’s curse stretched, yawned, and awoke. A sleepy monster finally rearing its head.

Thankfully for Kevin, the transport ship had made it to Palmetto waters by that time. _The Fox_ and her crew sailed southwest into the island’s rocky waters to aid the sinking ship. 

Many men drowned. Andrew was nearly one of them.

Well, no. _Aaron_ was. A colossal wave tossed _The Fox_ so fiercely that she practically tipped, tilting precariously. Aaron was the one slipping on wet wood, sliding starboard, slamming onto his back and scrabbling at anything as the waves heaved. Andrew simply reacted, moving before understanding how, what with the unsteady movement of _The Fox_ making walking near impossible. Andrew grabbed at a collar, and then at a sleeve when he missed, and he hurled Aaron away.

He remembers flipping violently over the banisters, thrown overboard and into the water. Aaron’s voice, strangled with fear, carried from somewhere, but Andrew had no time to consider it. He simply remembers the froth of the sea pushing him down, the air in his lungs escaping him as well as his wits, and the passing thought of, _Not yet_.

And then— 

Hands on him, long nails hooking in his shirt and dragging him in a direction different from the ocean’s pull. A flash of red amongst all the murk.

Wymack looks properly aged when he asks, “What are you suggesting?” 

Renee nods, pleased with the inquiry. “Not blood magic, but perhaps magic.” 

Kevin snorts. “What’s the difference?”

“Blood magic tends to be more complex than standard techniques, which is why its use often results in chaos. There is more to consider, a lot more power to control, and can easily backfire. A spell, on the other hand, is simpler.”

Blood magic is simply the highest price. Of course. What desperate man wouldn’t pay?

Boyd fidgets, a swaying daisy, eyes drifting between Renee and Kevin. “You make it sound easy.”

Kevin snaps his fingers at him, earning a scathing glare, but he only looks at Renee. “Go on.”

Wilds rubs Boyd’s arm, calling Kevin a dirty word that no one but Abby (a small frown gracing her face) reacts to. Mouths like sailors, all of them. 

Ha. They are sailors. That’s the joke. Or maybe not. None of the Foxes have sailed in a while. A few trips to Columbia, some to a few farther spots, but never with _The Fox_ fully boarded and packed. A few for-hire hands join these trips, just to man the ship as she goes for supply runs, but the fact is that Kevin is as good of an anchor as any.

“It is simply a spell to try before we consider moving the focus of the magic onto you.” Renee bites her lip. “I know you were hesitant about going in that direction.”

Kevin frowns hard enough that Andrew suspects it’ll cleave his head in two. 

Of course Kevin Day’s priorities are as warped as his left hand. Blood magic had instantaneous results the first go around, surely it must be as effective the second time. Big, ol’ Captain says no? Fine then. A spell on dirt should be harmless enough. What’s this? A spell on himself? Devilry. 

Andrew snickers. The scowl Kevin sends his way suggests he knows Andrew’s laughing at him.

“I know you’ve tried laying soil in the bottom of your boat before, am I correct?” Renee asks needlessly. Of course the answer is yes. Kevin’s tried everything.

Although, Andrew doesn’t mind the soil attempts as much as some of the others. After all, it’s one of the few techniques that Andrew gets to watch Kevin bully the others into helping him dig up enough dirt, and more often than not someone finds the labor so aggravating that a fight breaks out. A spectator sport on a good day, a reason to get his knuckles bloody on a better one.

The whole idea behind the dirt in the boat is to trick Kevin’s curse into thinking Kevin never left land. It’s idiotic, it doesn’t work. Which leads Kevin — ever wishful, ever hopeful, _I’ll find you a reason_ Kevin — to believe it needs to be a specific kind of dirt, a particular amount to lay in the boat.

Andrew has reminded him more than once that they’re one step away from making a grave.

“—may need to try covering myself in a layer as well at this point,” Kevin’s saying, and if Andrew’s hearing right, he’s suggesting a fucking mud bath, but that can’t be right.

Oh no, it’s right. Wilds is laughing. She’s turned away, tucking her face into Matt’s shoulder while his own face fights off a grin. Dan can hide all she wants, but everyone knows a snort isn’t a cough. 

Wymack mutters something that sounds a lot like, “Christ almighty,” but Renee is kind enough to not comment further.

Instead, she pushes on. “I don’t believe it’s an issue of where the soil is exactly, but more that the presence of soil isn’t enough. Betsy feels that with a small ritual, we can heighten the sense of earth and perhaps accomplish what you’ve been trying.”

Kevin’s eyes narrow while everyone waits for his response. The silence is unnecessary. Everyone knows what he’ll say next, so Andrew says it for him, “Renee, why don’t you tell him what the _ritual_ is now so that he’ll stop picturing pentagrams and dancing naked under the moon. Don’t worry, Kev. No one wants that from you either. You probably couldn’t dance if you tried.”

Matt sends a grin Andrew’s way, like Andrew meant any of those words for his enjoyment. Andrew might tell him to fuck off, just so Boyd remembers which of Andrew’s words are for who. Ah, but wait. Wymack’s looking at him, squinting at Andrew and seeing whatever the hell he can see that no one else can. Wymack and Kevin, believers with poor judgement.

“Right.” Renee nods. “We should discuss it further with Betsy, perhaps later tonight if you’re able, but you would not have to do much. It’ll require time, perhaps until the next full moon, and maybe even some of your hair, but the rest will be up to Betsy.”

Wymack doesn’t give Kevin much time to mull it over, cutting in with a firm look and, “A talk with Betsy hurts no one. After dinner, after you’ve helped clean up, you can go up to see her.”

It’s a command, a captain’s order, but a kind one. Kevin doesn’t protest, something ingrained in him to listen to his superiors perhaps. He works his jaw but gives a quick nod Renee’s way. All at once the conversation is done, and the daisies return to the kitchen, with Dan calling out to Renee to coax her further into the house. Abby searches their gazes, looks the longest at Wymack’s like she doesn’t know she’s being obvious. Kevin is so wrapped in his thoughts that Andrew suspects little will worm through his skull.

Despite this, Captain asks him, “Are you okay?”

Kevin frowns. “How do we know that more magic won’t complicate what’s already been done?”

“We don’t,” Captain gives, face weary and lined but always solid, always sure, “But if we don’t take the opportunities presented to us, we’ll never know if they’ll make things better, either.”

“Pretty words,” Andrew adds, _grinning grinning grinning_ but no true joy is to be found in his bared teeth, “Fitting for _The Fox’s_ captain.”

 _The Fox’s_ captain, baptized as David Wymack on a Northern Territory, served in some of the Crown’s wars as a privateer. Opportunities are the livelihood of privateers. After all, pirates hang, soldiers are condemned to servitude, but privateers?

Well, like Andrew said. David Wymack served in some of the Crown’s wars, but if _The Fox_ mixed up some of her targets and ended up raiding the wrong people? It’s war time, mistakes happen. Besides, since the Crown won their war? Nobody cares what happened to those people.

Andrew once asked him, _What would you have done if the Crown lost their fights? Wiped your hands clean of it altogether?_ _Privateer David Wymack didn’t commit treason, he simply helped see in the new age?_

To which Captain looked Andrew straight in the eye, and answered unflinchingly, _Problem with that?_

Andrew didn’t say anything, but later that month Andrew and his family signed onto Wymack’s crew, which was answer enough.

Wymack’s mouth quirks, raising an eyebrow. “Watch it, smartass. Either go help in the kitchen or keep quiet.”

Andrew mimes locking his mouth, tossing out the key, but both of them know that it won’t last two minutes.

No matter. Even buzzing, even with his thoughts floating one way to another, Andrew knows that this dull glimmer of hope is enough to keep Kevin steady, if only for a little while longer.


	3. Moon Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for crazy_like_a!
> 
> I wrote this chapter in segments over the course of different months, so the flow may be a little choppy. Thanks for putting up with it!

Riko Moriyama sailed into southern waters, once upon a time, and came upon a rumor of magic.

Magic is always a rumor, so Andrew can’t say, nor does he care to know, what it was Riko thought he’d find with this whisper. The point is simply this; there was a whisper, and Riko’s greedy little heart almost beat out of his chest.

According to Kevin, the Moriyama empire has discovered a crack in its foundation. Not so much an issue of piracy as it is a sense of civil unrest. More and more outspoken insurgents are popping into existence, from the tax-burdened saleswoman to the outlawed marauder. 

There are always chinks in a powerful institute’s gold-plated armor. And there are always ways to fill the gaps, to fizzle out the spread of a rift. Gold moves more men to action than any righteous cause. 

There’s a technique, supposedly, where some potters will repair the breakage in ceramics and fine China by filling the cracks with gold. Everyone can see the flaws, but the gilded changes are just pretty enough to distract. The Moriyama Crown plays this game well enough. 

But let’s say pretty things aren’t enough, say the gold eventually peters out. Well, the Moriyamas have been known to venture into the workings of magic more than once. 

Any gummy-mouthed, loose-lipped fisherman could spew tales of the feather bedding in the royal estates, plucked from a griffin’s plumage. Women with fanciful desires will speak on the jewelry Kengo’s wife wears, claiming the glinting scales on the heavy gold chains were collected from successful infiltrations of siren nests. If the enemies of the crown are caught in a terrible storm, it is believed to have been summoned by a water demon in their control. 

On and on, until the tales grow teeth and sprout tails and become creatures of legend themselves. Great deterrents for rebellion on a good day, but on a bad day, rumors do little but cover a pot about to boil over.

So, in a time where the pot _is_ spilling over, a rumor of powerful magic stirred Riko Moriyama to action, wanting to glorify the family he is barely considered part of. 

And he used _The Raven’s_ first mate, Kevin Day, as the cannon fodder.

After all, if there is anything a Moriyama is good at, even an unwanted one like Riko, it’s reminding others that the edges of their knives are always sharp. 

* * *

Summer on Palmetto comes with long bouts of rain that leave everything damp and sticky, only to follow with a dry spell that crisps the grass and browns the flowers.

There is a week, sometimes two, in between the wet and dry that is an awful combination of the both. The humidity swells to a peak, leaving heads craning back to search clear blue skies for any hope of a raincloud, yet the sun remains a clear beacon bearing down upon them all. 

“It’s so hot, I’m going to _melt_.”

“Get off me. Go hang off Erik if you’re going to crawl all over.”

“Yeah, Klose! Come get your man!”

Andrew’s stomach is turning, which is due to the Curse Nurse. Betsy Betsy Betsy brews a special tea with special leaves and special spices to settle Andrew’s nerves on the days he’s too beside himself. His day was as any other up until the late afternoon when the sun was too happy with itself to remind them all of their sensitive skin. 

At one point he was Andrew — cursed Andrew — then it was as though there was a fire burning in his veins. His conversations became gruesomely senseless and erratic, and in a swell of vexation, he took a page from Kevin’s book to begin drinking early, which seemed to worsen anything he had to say. 

Within a span of an hour, he was in a handful of different states. He was telling Kevin about wanderlust tales; from islands that move to glowing bays. Parroting stories which visiting sailors share down at the docks. Andrew’s discussion led to a heated debate between himself and Kevin on the history of Moriyama exploration. He lost interest in watching Kevin get outraged by his outlandish claims after Kevin began spouting facts that sounded like a stale, Moriyama speech, so he left him in Nicky and Abby’s hands. He sought out Renee for a spar, but she was spending her afternoon with Reynolds. Drinking quickly lost its appeal after he reached a mild buzz. People watching was near useless when he was unable to focus. He had no desire to speak with anyone who couldn’t keep up with his conversations. Being in his own head would be worse than not, with his thoughts racing too fast for him to hold onto. He’d only end up thinking about topics that are useless to mull over.

Such days come and go, so Betsy was not surprised when he came to her door, asking for one of her foolish teas.

Her teas do little but settle the excess frenziness and quiet him down with the supplication of a stomach ache, giving an illusion of clearness. 

Which is why he now perches on the edge of a staircase — Palmetto has terraces, like a stepping ladder from its coastlines to the rolling hills above. One level, then the next, and the cobblestone roads squeezed in between like veins — facing the horizon and watching the rest of the Foxes squabble within Abby’s little house’s courtyard below.

Renee sits beside him, watching the crew’s antics with a smile, wrapping her coat tighter around herself.

Their silence isn’t so much as natural as it is necessary, as Andrew thinks he might vomit if he opens his mouth, and Renee is no doubt thinking something or another that is probably the very reason why she currently isn’t down in the courtyard below. Her eyes follow a head of blonde, her fingers tight in her coat sleeves, and Andrew doesn’t think of auburn eyes and red scales while watching her.

“Oi, oi! Stop it. Get off! I’m going to miss it! Babe, babe, look!”

All at once the scurrying and tittering and movement jerks. The courtyard is divided in three, with Renee’s pulled towards one corner, Andrew’s towards another, and Wymack and Abby somewhere in no man’s land. However, in a second these groups become like a three-headed beast, all in sync as they turn towards the horizon beyond the small wall in Abby’s courtyard.

The sun crests on the horizon. Andrew’s skin feels like it’s being pulled, or like he’s being shoved into a barrel. Pinched and squeezed and tugged.

Pinks, golds, and hints of purple dapple the sky like fish scales. A quiet lull in conversation goes through each Fox as they all take a moment to appreciate the sunset.

Within minutes it’s gone, coaxing the Foxes’ usual volumes back to a high, and Andrew feels something inside him _settle_.

His curse; tucked to bed for another day.

He breathes, and it feels like dust and ash after a gunfight. He’s so tired he could sleep now and not wake until noon tomorrow. His head pounds. His stomach churns. 

But he’s himself, and he can _think_.

“Are you okay?” Renee asks him, tilting her head to peer into his eyes. Andrew doesn’t deem the question worthy of a response. She smiles at him like he answered her anyway.

“Renee!” Matt calls from below, and she turns towards his shout. “Get down here, we’re taking bets! What do you say Kevin has to take a mud bath for Betsy’s spell to work?”

Kevin scowls in Matt’s direction. “Fuck you.”

Andrew and Renee watch as an argument slowly brews, fueled with jeers and curses and a lack of general sensitivity. Renee shakes her head, amused, and rises to her feet. She starts for the stairs, and Andrew continues watching the rest of the Foxes. In the corner of the courtyard, Andrew sees Aaron give them all a disgusted look, sees a doe-eyed girl at his arm laugh into her hand. 

“The bastard,” Andrew says, and Renee stops short.

She turns and stares at him, soft smile gone. Her face is a mirror, Andrew’s own blank eyes staring back at him.

“How’d you figure out how to kill him?”

He knows how the story went. Renee shared her past, eventually, and it was a story he understood well. He knows the bastard died by one of the very knives Andrew now keeps in his own boot. Andrew simply wants to know how Renee figured out she _could_ kill him. 

After all, she is as familiar with the constraints of magic as Andrew and Kevin are. Magic kept her trapped under her tormentor’s heel. Yet she figured a way to claw herself out.

Renee answers, “A witch gave me the idea.”

The fading light does something to her face, warping it into something far worse than Natalie Renee Walker, but then she blinks, and she returns to herself. A trick, a flip of a coin.

Spell broken.

* * *

“Are those roses?”

Andrew turns, following Neil’s line of view until he catches sight of the pink flowers twisted in the treeline shrubbery. 

He turns back to Neil and raises an eyebrow.

Neil blinks back, undeterred. “Sailors sing songs.”

Andrew stares.

Neil shrugs a shoulder, then softly recites with no inflection, “When roses bloom in winter's gloom, then will my love return to me.”

That leaves Andrew with an array of questions to choose from, but he tucks away most, tosses the ones he’d gain nothing out of having answered, and instead shakes his head.

“No,” Andrew says. 

“Then what are they?”

“Wild flowers.”

Neil dips down, letting the water rise to his chin, eyes flitting towards the side again. “Okay.”

Andrew stands up, and Neil jerks back, making the water around him ripple. He frowns at Andrew, half-questioning, half-bothered, but Andrew provides no answer.

Instead, he purposefully holds Neil’s gaze, then slowly walks off the dock, his heavy boots making solid thumps on the wood. He makes it past the beach, leaving damp imprints on the rocky sand, and looks back, to make sure Neil is watching.

He is — tucked into the tide like a bobbing swimmer, his head tilted curiously.

Andrew comes to the forest line bushes, plucks a blossom, nicks his finger on a thorn for his trouble, and recalls their last meeting. Neil was distracted. He kept looking at the trees. 

No, not the trees. The flowers. 

When the memory stirs up that unnamed feeling, that feeling when his interest becomes tainted with something Andrew has no interest in exploring, he spends a whole second debating crushing the soft petals in his palm. He doesn’t. It is foolish.

Putting pieces together should make Neil boring. 

It doesn’t. ****

Mood twisted, leaving a sour taste at the back of Andrew’s throat, he takes his time returning to the dock. He runs a thumb over each of the pink petals. Pollen dusts his skin. He spreads his fingers, lets the stem fall between his ring and middle fingers, and stares at the space it takes up. Debates rolling another cigarette, just so he can pretend he doesn’t see Neil’s squirming figure in the tide.

However, doing so would feel like an admission of some kind, so instead he drops the flower, and in the way near-weightless objects do it veers wildly before falling into the water. It doesn’t even make a noise.

Neil swipes at his wet hair, slicking it back along his scalp. He stares at the flower. It floats on the surface. 

Eventually, after Neil gets past whatever mental block is in his thick skull, he tentatively reaches out and cups his hands under the flower. He lifts it and water drips between the cracks of his fingers. The flower lays in his palms — delicate and glistening with moisture.

Neil stares at it. One of its petals lifts and flaps with the passing sea breeze. Andrew tries to figure what part of the flower would captivate a mermaid. It’s easy to guess.

And then Neil looks up, his expression cracked with emotion.

Andrew’s breath jerks, tugs, stops in place.

“Thank you,” Neil says, holding Andrew’s gaze. 

Andrew swallows and doesn’t answer. Instead, he gets up and walks away. 

He doesn’t take the road home.

* * *

One week flies by, the second week drags. The third week Kevin’s nerves tear him apart so badly that after a night of heavy drinking he spends two days with a hangover that renders him near useless. 

The moon wanes, the moon waxes, and Andrew can’t help but feel they’re all collecting frogs in a bucket.

* * *

“Would blood magic help or worsen a curse?”

Neil’s face closes off, eyes dark, body moving downwards in the water until he’s only visible from the chin up. “What kind of blood?”

Interesting. Most immediately shy from the idea of blood magic. Neil asks about the resources. 

“Are there options?” Andrew asks.

The red tail flicks back and forth like an antsy cat. “Yes.”

“Then let’s say human, for now.”

He lets Neil take whatever implication he can from his answer, watches carefully as Neil goes so still that it’s just the water that moves him. 

He waits, ready for a reaction, perhaps something disappointing, but then—

Neil smirks, showing something cruel and sharp. It changes his whole expression, makes it too human, makes it too dangerous. Sharks and fish aren’t cruel. People are. It’s an extreme Andrew’s seen in smudgy reflections and bloody knuckles and knife edges. 

“Your people will not know how to do it right, and you will damn yourselves to misfortune far worse than madness.”

“You know about my curse then.”

Neil leers. “I had an inkling.”

“How is that possible then, hm? It isn’t in place after sunset, and we’ve never met _properly_ during the day.”

Andrew’s made a mistake, though it takes him a moment to realize it. Neil doesn’t outwardly react besides all cruel mirth leaving his face. His mouth goes slack, eyes lidded, and he’s too calm.

Neil was fishing for information and Andrew unwittingly gave it. He clenches his teeth, crushes his cigarette between his fingers and feels the ember burning out on his knuckle. 

“I told you,” Neil says, leaning back so that his scars flash and his tail appears, and Andrew feels something hot and angry before he shovels it down again. “I had an inkling, but I could not be sure.”

“And now that you’re sure, what does that mean?”

“It means that I think you could find ways to break it.”

“Oh?” Andrew sneers. “Pretty fish wants to play hero? Hear that from another sailor’s song? Go on, sing it for me.”

“What difference would it make? Why not break it now instead of letting the curse run its course?”

“You seem to know an awful lot about my curse.”

“You said it started two years ago. You said a witch cursed you. Witches cannot create powerful curses without a blood ritual. Your questions about using blood means your curse involved none. You’d know more otherwise.” Neil grins, not kindly. The deep, dark sea through and through on his curved lips. “Therefore, a curse made with simple means is a curse that cannot last more than three to five years, at most.”

“That so?”

“It is.”

“Then tell me, how did you figure the madness?”

There is a long, drawn silence. The longer Neil sits on his words the more Andrew wants to physically drag the answer from him. Part of him wants to appreciate that Neil feels apprehensive enough to wait before working out what to say. The other part is sharper, more cutting.

Finally, Neil gives, “I hear things. I heard people talking.”

It’s a ridiculous answer, and all Andrew hears in his head is a months-old whisper, hoarse with disuse, telling him, _If you speak of me to others, they’ll think you mad_.

Andrew wants to call him out on the statement, wants to force Neil to explain how he’d have the guts to get near enough to people to be able to eavesdrop when he has that wild, cornered look in his eye whenever there’s a mention of another individual.

Instead, Andrew works his jaw and tells him, “You should have swam away after Kevin’s shipwreck all those months ago. I would have no passing temptations to stab something red and scaled then.”

“Kevin?”

Rage swells.

He waits, fury making him into a paradox. His hands don’t shake but his heart beats wildly in his chest. He can feel his pulse in his toes, in his temples, yet he doesn’t move a muscle. Stillness and momentum.

Neil’s mouth is tilted just the slightest in the corner, smugger than the time Nicky watched Seth trip over a rope on the dock and topple into the water.

So, Andrew jumps off the dock.

Neil isn’t expecting it, nor did Andrew expect him to, so he catches a glimpse of panic in Neil’s eyes before the water goes over his head. Andrew moves before he can see past the foam and water, reaching out and grabbing at an arm. Neil jerks but can’t tear away, and then Andrew reaches out and wraps a hand around Neil’s throat.

They breach the surface, water in Andrew’s eyes but Neil face across from him. He doesn’t put pressure on his grip on Neil’s throat, but the hand on Neil’s arm is firm. 

Neither move beside what it takes to keep afloat. Andrew kicks his legs, staying above water, and Neil merely flicks his tail carefully. The sea laps at them like they are turtles in the current, unaware of the tension between their bodies. Eventually, Neil brings his opposite hand to wrap around Andrew’s wrist. His skin is warm.

“I am telling you once, and only once, to be careful,” Andrew tells him, “with what you try getting out of me.”

The threat is clear. Neil’s eyes are clear. The understanding Andrew sees in them is clear.

But so is the defiance.

Neil says, his Adam's apple moving beneath Andrew’s grip, “You can tell me lots of things, but you should be careful yourself if you believe I have to listen to you.”

The water is cold. Neil’s shoulders are tense, his pulse racing beneath Andrew’s hand. Andrew’s nerves are alight.

He pushes away, kicking into his own space, letting Neil slip out of his grip and further away than Andrew would be able to swim in the few seconds it took Neil. 

“We’ll see,” Andrew warns him, treading in place.

Neil doesn’t reply, but he does retreat first, disappearing into the water. His fin waving above the water. After another second, Andrew swims for the beach.

One night for flowers, another for a fight, and neither are a victory.

**Author's Note:**

> should update once a month if life permits. strong if. if a chapter is late, instead of messaging me with a question on the update schedule, come back to this note and reread. 
> 
> I have deleted fics over unsolicited criticism/feedback. I am too self-centered to appreciate anything you feel you need to say, and I don't want to hear it anyway. 
> 
> with that said, thank you for reading! I promise I'm not as mean as I sound. I'm just bastard.


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